Second Week

Weekly Development

This week's focus was on level design. The idea is to have three levels, with the first being Quite easy and introducing the player to the movement as well as several of the mechanics that will be seen in the following levels. The introduced mechanics are shown below:

This gif shows the brown block which can only be destroyed by player projectiles.

This gif introduces a couple of concepts. Firstly, it shows how when the player comes into contact with the red spikes, they get sent back away from them. They are actually sent back to a checkpoint which was placed just before the first set of spikes.

This final gif shows these green platforms which the player can shoot, but actually land on. This requires the player to "pogo" across them in order to reach the other side. It also shows another checkpoint. There is also an area at the end of the level which causes the player to move to the next level when they reach it. 

This is the first level. It is quite simple and not very long, but it gives the player a large area to become familiar with the controls.It introduces some key concepts such as being forced to jump up walls, use regular jumps in combination with rocket jumps in order to gain extra height/distance, and the other various blocks such as the spikes within the level. In order to be more forgiving (as it is basically a tutorial level), there are checkpoints just prior to the red spikes, and another checkpoint before the green platforms.

So far only the first level is completed, as the second and third levels were done but I decided they needed to be changed. It is challenging to create levels that are able to be completed by anyone and also allow a more skilled player to challenge themselves to go faster. I think the way I want to design these levels is to have a suggested "easy" path that the player can follow, but also allow these to be skippable/faster through harder means. Using the current blocks in creative ways (for example, moving staircases out of the green blocks) will be essential in order to make the levels feel achievable by anyone, yet satisfying to play while going fast. Another issues with the levels is the way I was trying to get the camera to work. The initial idea was to make celeste style levels, where the camera would be dependent on rooms rather than where the player was. With the way the player has to control the mouse in order to shoot, it made it very difficult to play as the player was required to move their mouse all over the screen. In a game about being fast, this level of precision was too much and it was not very enjoyable. Currently, a very simple camera is in place to follow the player and it feels a lot better to play.

Known Issues

Through my own testing as well as other players', there are various issues which need to be addressed. These are:

• Although it is quite funny, there is no limit to how fast players can shoot. From watching other people play, they quickly figure out you can shoot a lot of projectiles very quickly and build up a huge amounts of horizontal/vertical speed very easily.  Although this is quite fun, it trivialises a lot of sections. This can be fixed by adding a cooldown timer between shots, although it will only need to be very slight.

• Players have observed something called a "Super Jump", where the player can shoot up into the air at incredibly fast speeds by sliding up against a wall. The reasoning behind this is due to the way the game detects if the player is currently on the ground. This will have to be fixed by changing it from it's current, simple approach to a more complex one that is more accurate (likely using rays to detect whether or not the player is on the ground, rather than just if the collider is on the ground.

Gif showing the "Super Jump" issue.

Fixed issues

• The player can now move with A and D.